Enjoying the Small Things

April 18, 2010 By Kelle

It’s rained non stop all weekend long. And although I’m always giving a holla to the rain and all we-dance-in-it, we-like-it, we-don’t-need-no-sunshine, sometimes it doesn’t always work out that way. Because sometimes when it rains, I get in a Rain Funk. Especially when it doesn’t stop raining and Brett’s little rain collector in the back yard is measuring accumulations of doldrum proportions.

Here’s the cool thing though. I happen to have a black belt in Rain Funk Reversal. A mental notebook, sorta, of numerous strategies that rebirth sunshine and happiness in my otherwise pluvious mood. And it was last night, while Brett was fishing and my dad was watching the girls, that I began to shake it off with the help of Rain Reversal Strategy Numbers 12, 32, and 56…and that would be calling cousin Joann, buying a drug store lipstick, and digging through reject piles of clearanced Crabtree & Evelyn lotions at TJ Maxx, respectively. And it was about the time I scored an avacado body butter for $3.99 that it hit me…what a beautiful thing it is to be able to fully feel sadness and fear, annoyance and bitterness, loneliness and desperation and to know that they are real and meaningful feelings, but they are replaceable, reversible and recoverable–with time, and the more we submerge ourselves in little pleasures from avocado body butters to inhaling the tiny breaths of a snuggled newborn, the more we learn to accept the duration of the rain, to let it seep deep into our soul to renew parched roots, and to find richer beauty once it subsides and its rewards make themselves known.

So it was this weekend. Enjoying the small things amongst the rain…

Things like an afternoon lounge on the lanai, listening to the chorus of bullfrogs the downpour has awakened, and feeling the mist of wind-carried rain that has cooled down an otherwise muggy day.

Or mornings at the park, swapping babies with friends, smearing cream cheese on bagels and sipping coffee from the picnic tables where we watch our littles run off towards the climby things.

Pearls to the Park…looks like our Baylee is headin’ toward being Park Mom #1 someday.

The Birthday Celebration of Lainey’s bud Cameryn and the gathering of littles it brings. Oh, to behold the beauty of a child’s celebration of life and the way it takes all the color, all the childhood wonder, all the smiles encrusted with cupcake frosting and cookie crumbs and brews them together with the grandeur of rich-toned balloons, ruffle-hemmed princess dresses and pink party favor trinkets to yield one perfect day of serendipitous bliss.

Of obstetricians who also happen to be clever with embroidery machines because our Dr. Jody whipped up Nella’s name on her little fairy party duds.

On watching Nella’s new favorite thing to do…she totally digs having her hands clapped…her smiles not only prove it but turn every cell in my body to complete mush.

Seriously though…I can’t get enough of her flirty-eyed grins. And, if we’re really lucky, we get this drunk little laugh. It seriously sounds like a little huh-huh that slurs out of someone very drugged up. But coming from her? Hello, Heaven.

This one was while she was sleeping…and I sidled right up to her and said some lovely little coos. And it makes her smile every time…even if she’s sleeping. And the fact that she responds even in her sleep just solidifies the fact that this girl’s love-ometer reads off the charts.

She does it for Brett every single time he works for it. She loves him, and he eats it up. And every time she does it, he smiles and says, “She loves me, doesn’t she?” And I can tell my “Yes, she does, Babe” validates what he already knows just enough to put his head into happy daddy clouds.

And then Lainey goes and ups the ante.

And enjoying all that? Well, I almost forgot it rained.